


centennial

by avosettas



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Dreamtale Sans | Dream (Undertale), Empath Dream, Gen, Overuse of HTML, Panic Attacks, Past Long-Term Sensory Deprivation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sensory Overload, Stream of Consciousness, Telepathic Bond, Underswap Sans (Undertale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28799445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: (Relating to a 100th year anniversary)Dream emerges from his stone prison.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	centennial

**Author's Note:**

> purposefully wrote this with such a focus on the "centennial" because it's my 100th work!! yayyyy
> 
> anyways. half of these tags are bullshit that i typed myself, it was fun (/s, it was not fun.)
> 
> also, nav is my star sanses blue! his name is derived from "navigation", because you can use stars to navigate yknow? if you've read uhhh. fuck what's it called. my other fic "someone has to take care of these flowers", nav and echo are both underswap sans, but DIFFERENT and its FUN.

Slowly, slowly. Then all at once. 

(Dream barely realized he could recognize things outside of himself; the emptiness he was used to, replaced by… more.) 

He gasps as his vision returns, his hearing, every sense denied to him by his stone encasing. Even the relatively soft feeling of emotions, feelings drifting from one soul to the next, passing over his as they traveled - everything _hurts_. 

(There was only ever emptiness before. Emptiness and, occasionally, though he couldn’t parse exactly _what_ it was, some sort of negative feeling. 

Not his wheelhouse, but his brother’s.) 

~~Where is his brother? Where is Nightmare?~~

_Hopeful, excited - false?_

It takes time - it feels like _hours_ \- for his eyes to focus on the monsters in front of him. Even then, they still seem blurry, smeared at the edges, like those watercolor paintings Nightmare had showed him in a book once. 

Skeleton monsters, the same as his outer shell. One is speaking, but the words go through Dream’s aural canals without being processed at all. His eye lights are blue, eye sockets wide with worry. The other is barely paying attention to Dream, gulping something yellow. He’s covered in ink blots and paint smears. 

(His emotions feel wrong, bad, _fake_ -) 

Every gulp of the yellow liquid he takes makes the excitement Dream can sense grow stronger, but it _isn’t real, why isn’t it real?_

He reaches for Nightmare, deep in his mind, but his brother can’t or won’t respond. Their telepathic connection is closed. 

And that’s what makes him scream. Not the fact that he can move and see and hear after however long it’s been, but the fact that he can’t reach his brother _at all_. 

Hands on his shoulders, trying to soothe him - he shakes them off, but every movement feels like fire in his joints, like rocks pelting him as they had in his most recent memory. 

~~_Nightmare._ ~~

His most recent memory. In which the villagers destroyed the tree, _hurt his brother_ \- 

(Nightmare’s skull cracked like an egg, his right eye socket _destroyed_. The apples rotting and turning a slick, sickening black - 

Except one. The one that merged with Dream’s soul, one golden apple to Nightmare’s rotten and black ninety-nine.) 

And now Dream is alone, in this unfamiliar place. 

The fight leaves him. His body twinges painfully as he hunches forward, chest nearly touching his knees - he feels like vomiting, but there’s nothing in his stomach. He can’t remember the last time he ate. 

“Breathe, breathe…” One of the strangers urges. Dream gasps instead; a dry, broken sob escapes him. 

“Wow,” says the other stranger. “I thought he was supposed to be an old god.” 

Something negative - familiar, familiar - crashes onto the soul of the monster trying to calm Dream, and he clutches that feeling, clawing at the stranger’s shirt. 

“Don’t be rude,” they say, and Dream knows they’re so close but it sounds like they’re speaking underwater. To Dream, they add something else, much softer, but he can’t hear it. 

Everything is bright and loud and _happy_ , where is Nightmare?

( ~~Dead and gone. Corrupted. Instead of consuming the apples, they consumed him, feasted on the anxiety and the trauma in his soul -~~ ) 

Dream wails once more, but it’s weak, so weak. He hasn’t used his voice in - how long has it been? How long has he been encased in stone, held in stasis against his will? 

“It’s been a century,” the voice says soothingly. Did Dream speak? He must have - this monster isn’t his brother, and no one else had that sort of telepathic connection with him. “You’re safe now, Dream. You’re safe, I promise.” 

(He’s not safe, not without Nightmare, not without his brother, his twin, his other half -) 

It’s too much. His newly restored vision tunnels and blurs into blackness, and Dream collapses into the stranger’s lap. 

(No, no, no, no, no… not again. No more darkness. No more silence.) 

But it feels like he simply blinks, and then, all at once, everything returns. 

Sight, hearing, touch, emotions. 

Dream finds himself staring at the ceiling of an unfamiliar room, winded despite having just woken up. He takes everything in, slowly this time. 

First, what he sees. (The badly-painted white ceiling with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to it; the pale blue walls with a few paintings of plants, and some sticky notes with neat handwriting on them; the quilt made of squares of blue in varying shades and patterns covering him; the window beside the bed, letting in the soft early-evening light; the bedside table with his gloves on it, and his diadem as well, dull and ugly from… everything.) 

Second, what he hears. (The room itself is silent, save for the sound of Dream’s own breathing - it’s heavy, and but he’s too worked up to calm it. Outside, there’s the far away sound of birds chirping, and somewhere else in the house, someone turns the water on and back off.) 

Third, what he feels. (The pillow behind his head isn’t that soft, but that’s fine - he’d lived in a hollowed tree trunk, after all. The quilt, heavy and warm on his bones, and thick and firm beneath his hands. The breeze from the open window drifts in, welcome in the warm room.) 

Finally, what he senses. (One other person in the house, and their emotions are real, so real, but negative, so Dream can’t pinpoint what exactly they’re feeling. The universe - 

So many people.) 

He tries to sit up further than his propped position, but every movement agitates his sore joints. Everything hurts. Just as bad, whenever he moves the bed creaks and groans beneath him, and it gives him a headache.

Then the door squeaks open, and the noisy bed is forgotten. 

One of the monsters from yesterday stands on the threshold - thankfully, it’s the kind one, with the real emotions. He’s taller than Dream, but only by perhaps an inch or less. The negative emotion - it belongs to this monster, Dream realizes as it slips - transitions into something like _warmth_ and _gladness_. 

“It’s good to see you’re awake!” He says with a wide smile, making his way into the room. In his hands in a dinner tray, with a glass of water and a plate of eggs and some fruit on it. “Ink said it might take a while, but…” Some emotion passes over his face, and Dream feels the warmth, the gladness dissipate momentarily, before he grins again. 

Placing the tray on the bedside table, he continues, “I’m Nav.” 

“I’m Dream,” Dream replies, and it frightens him how soft his voice is. 

Nav nods. “I know. May I sit?” 

“I… yes?” Dream answers uncertainly. Nav makes no move to sit, however, hovering besides the bed. “It’s your house, isn’t it?” Dream's voice pitches up at that, betraying his anxiety. 

“You’re my guest, though!” Nav assures him, still not sitting, and Dream can’t detect an ounce of emotion in his body that isn’t genuinely positive, except maybe some concern, verging on negative worry. “I want you to be comfortable.” 

“Alright,” Dream hesitates again, before shifting his legs so Nav has space to sit. They burn in protest, the pain nearly blinding, and he gasps a bit. Nav’s emotions shift again, negative, hopefully to simply worry, but he can’t really focus too hard on it, pained as he is. 

Something presses into his lower leg bones, two even bits of pressure on each leg, and suddenly his legs feel cold and heavy. It takes him a moment to realize it’s Nav, healing him best as he can despite the lack of actual wounds. He’s finally sat down, and he stares at Dream, eyelights flickering across his face as he asks, “Are you okay?” 

“Hurts when I move,” Dream says after a moment. 

“...I guess that’s not surprising,” Nav sighs, removing his hands and moving to set up the food. “You were… it was a century, after all.” 

Dream folds his hands carefully in his lap. They look the same - a few scars from hurting himself while practicing archery or with his blades, but otherwise pure white bone. 

A century. A centennial stuck in stone, unable to move, while stars only knew what’s happened out in the universe - in the multiverse, considering Dream’s suspicions. 

Has he changed? Has he grown? 

He’s stiff and aching and in pain, and overstimulated and overloaded by each and every bit of sensory input. But has he changed? Will he go back to how he was, when the stiffness and the anxiety wear off? 

(Will he see Nightmare again?) 

“Are you okay?” Nav asks softly. 

“Why me?” Dream whispers before he can stop himself. “Why _us_?” 

“...Who?” Nav replies after a moment. 

“Nightmare,” Dream croaks, and it strikes him that he hasn’t said his brother’s name aloud in a century, “and I, why us? We didn’t _ask_ to be this way.” 

“I don’t know,” Nav murmurs, holding onto Dream’s clasped hands with one of his own. “I’m sorry.” 

“Where am I?” It comes out like a sob, and he _hates_ it, but he can’t stop blurting questions, either. “Who - why am I _here_? I want to - to go home,” and tears drip onto his hands.

“This is… um, it’s called the Omega Timeline,” Nav explains softly, squeezing Dream’s knuckles in an attempt to soothe him. “It’s a safe haven, for inhabitants of the multiverse who…” He hesitates, but Dream can see rather than sense the emotion squirming in his soul. _Pity_. Nav takes a deep breath, “It’s for people who don’t have homes anymore.” 

“I have a home,” Dream whispers. 

Nav’s pity is even more obvious now, sorrow clear in his eyes. “Dream… Before Ink and I pulled you out of your universe, it had already shrunk to a fraction of the size it had been a century before. Yesterday, after… after you passed out, Ink told me that it’s gone now. He can’t find it, and he can… he can usually get into any universe.” 

Dream inhales shakily. He doesn't care who Ink is, too focused on everything else - The tree, his _brother_ \- “Where is Nightmare?” he asks, voice calm despite the roiling emotions in his soul. 

Nav seems even less happy to answer this question, but he does so dutifully: “He… I think he was living in there. So…” He doesn’t finish the thought, instead mumbling, “I’m sorry, Dream.” 

Dream doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, he’s screaming, “You don’t know that! Please! Please,” he begs, voice dropping to a quiet plea, “tell me you don’t know that.” 

“I don’t know for sure, no,” Nav agrees as he stands. “Look… you’ve had a rough day. Unless you want me to stay, I think I’m going to leave you to eat, okay?” 

“Go ahead,” Dream replies, and his voice is something he’s never heard before. (Because it’s Nightmare’s. Hollow and fake and _not okay_ and Dream should have _known_ -) 

He starts pushing at the connection before Nav even shuts the door, scrunching his sockets shut and mentally saying _Please, please, please, please -_

There’s no answer. There isn’t even any give in the mental barrier, just a crack that would let him push an _I’m here, please, please_ into his brother’s mind. 

(He keeps trying nevertheless, even though he won’t get answer until he’s spent another four centuries without his brother. 

Four centuries, but every day feels like a centennial rather than the tiny, tiny fraction of one that it really is.)

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @avosettas (18+)  
> tumblr @asriells, but it's not really UT related


End file.
